1964: “No Beatles en Cuba”

The world is celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles landing at JFK Airport and appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show.

It was one of those events that changed music, radio playlists and the length of our hair. My mom used to call them “los bitles” or her “Cuban accented” pronunciation. It was also her disapproval of the hair or my desire to look like that.

However, I did not know a thing about Beatlemania until our family got here. 50 years ago we were in Cuba but The Beatles in New York, or Ed Sullivan, was nothing we knew a thing about.

The Castro dictatorship censored The Beatles and their music was not heard on local radio. The “ban” came from the to the top:

“Fidel Castro’s government frowned on Western music as a ‘decadent’ influence in the decades after his 1959 Cuban Revolution. Many Cubans recall being harassed for wearing long hair or listening to rock and pop music from Europe or the United States.”